Sunbirds, Crate Digging Edition

December 3, 2012 10:55 AM

A friend of mine is looking for a warm destination in the second half of this month.

His parameters are:
1.) Last two weeks of December.
2.) Less bad weather than Boston
3.) Crazy record stores/warehouses for him to dig into. (He is a jungle/noise/breakcore/other electronic DJ)
4.) Good vegetarian food
5.) Some sort of awesome music festival going on during that time.

posted by mkb to travel & transportation (4 answers total)

Dunno about music festivals (look at the calendar) but Tucson is awesome. It's been a few years, but a buddy I went on a road trip with (and who was a record hound) loved the rekkid stores.
posted by notsnot at 12:22 PM on December 3, 2012

Very few music festivals are held during the Christmas Holidays, for obvious reasons.

LA might suit, weather and record-wise. For sure vegetarian-wise. I recommend The Farmer's Daughter motel on Fairfax, across the street from the Farmer's Market. Goofy, but a good location and close to Hollywood.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:53 PM on December 3, 2012

Austin
posted by allnamesaretaken at 5:34 PM on December 3, 2012 [1 favorite]

No idea if this is a terrible suggestion, but I bet Mexico City would have an amazing music scene and awesome record stores. The weather's in the low 60s F and it's drier than most other times of the year. There's a chart at Wikipedia here.

Christmas might be relatively less crowded than normal if people have gone home to see family in their hometowns and vegetarian food isn't too hard to come by - the city's got food from all over Mexico and other parts of the world as well. It's also a world-class tourist destination in its own right with some great stuff to see and do (Aztec pyramids in the middle of town, lucha libre wrestling, Frida Kahlo's house...). And for the average tourist, it's pretty safe.

Does he speak Spanish? Even if he doesn't it's cosmopolitan enough that he could get by with a phrasebook.
posted by mdonley at 9:39 PM on December 3, 2012